Voices of the Void

by David V. Stewart

  He only regarded them for a fleeting second, then he opened fire, knowing they would kill him if he did not. He started with two quick shots to the central mass of each. Black blood sprayed out in clouds, but they initially seemed little affected. Screaming in chillingly low tones, making a dissonant diad between them, they burst from their lair. Andrew’s pulse quickened as they flailed about, bumping into each other recklessly, falling over themselves while black blood and bile spilled from their open ribs.

  Andrew fired slowly and deliberately, willing his nerves to obey him. Two bullets hammered through the heads of the attackers, and their progress finally stopped. Seemingly unwilling to accept the loss of the brain, their bodies continued to try to run as they toppled over and collapsed. Long fingers terminating in jagged nails whipped about. Andrew stepped closer and tapped another shot into each head, watching as the bodies finally began to stop moving.

  He approached the closest and flipped it over. The body was human in some ways essential to the species, containing all the bones and structure of a normal person. The skin was grey under the white diodes of his flashlight. It was also slightly translucent, revealing the anatomy beneath: tendons and muscle fascia, bone and sinew and long, blue veins. Remnants of clothing still clung to their bodies. He knelt closer, but could not see anything immediately identifiable on either one.

  They were human once, which meant that the creatures were the colonists. Nobody else had been to the desolate ferrous planet before him.

  Andrew stepped over the bodies and looked closer into the little hiding hole from which the monsters had emerged. Tattered clothing was everywhere, like a nest. The remnants of a half-rotten body were present, torn into pieces that were only vaguely human. Andrew guessed at where the rest of the corpse had gone.

  He checked his computer and quickly punched in a message. He was too deep now to transmit directly back to his ship, but as soon as he was in communications range the message would go out, informing Toro of what he had seen, and warning him that nobody else should be sent. He quickly turned and half-jogged back toward the central chamber, happy to cut his mission short and negotiate with his employer for payment even though he had failed to find his mark.

  Another vision hit him, though this one did not totally blank out his sight, as those further in the future usually did. He saw two more of the monsters waiting for him in the central chamber. He gunned them down, only to be floored by an attacker from above.

  Andrew focused as he went around the bend. He dropped to a knee as soon as he saw the brightly lit central room. Two shadowy figures were there. He shot each of them. Like the others, these began to charge at him, but he could see through their odd movements that his rifle was indeed effective at injuring them, they were just more reluctant to die than a regular person. He continued to fire as they slowly collapsed to the ground, just to be sure. Then he saw the hidden attacker emerge – along with two others.

  They ran at him quickly, their gate unmistakably human, though it became more monstrous as they were hit, turning into a knuckle walk or a fast crawl.

  Andrew’s bolt snapped back and stopped. Smoke rose from the empty chamber. He dropped his magazine and slammed in another. He let the bolt fly forward and continued firing at his attackers, which had closed the distance more quickly than he thought possible. Fear gripped him at that moment, and he let himself shoot more wildly than he knew was wise. The loss of discipline didn’t matter. Soon all three lay in twitching heaps five yards ahead of him.

  “Thanks, mate,” Andrew said tapping his left fist to his temple. Before walking on, he took out his magazine and quickly checked to see how many rounds he had left, since in the moment he had forgotten to count. Seeing eight remaining, he tucked away the magazine and put in a full one. He picked up his spent magazine from the floor and put it away too, then walked slowly down the hallway, keeping his rifle trained on the bodies in front of him, whose nerves still fired in defiance of the very real death of the major organs.

  Like the others, they were people – at least at one time. One of the closer ones seemed less monstrous than the others. It was a woman, likely young-looking whenever what changed her had taken hold. Her hair was still black, though matted, and though her skin was thin and stretched, he could still see healthy fat around the lips and cheeks. She still wore her clothes – a simple set of coveralls.

  Something occurred to Andrew. He had been so focused on the idea that there was a Wrtla at play that he had not considered other causes. Had some sort of pathogen his sensors could not detect caused this? Should he have resisted the urge to remove his helmet and breathe the air of the place? He looked at his computer and started up the air filter on his suit. Within a few moments, it returned a safe value. No atypical pathogens. DNA mutations in microbes within normal limits.

  Andrew opened his mind briefly to the oldest part of himself, and heard the laughing internally, drawing fingers towards his lips to pull them into a smile. He pushed it away.

  It has to be a Wrtla. I need to get out of here, payments be damned.

  He stepped over the bodies and continued to the central room of the mine, piquing his prescient self for warnings, but none came. The dead in the central room were in a similar state to the woman – still dressed and looking far less gone than the first pair he had slain. He turned and looked above to the tunnel from which he had just exited to see a small platform attached to the steel scaffolding.

  They were smart enough to set a trap for me, once they knew I was here.

  He headed back toward the stairway. He stepped over the pile of uneaten pre-packaged food and continued back up, still keeping his rifle ready, in case he needed it. At the top of the stairs, he turned to the left, seeing a pale white glow from another finished workspace. As he turned a sharp corner, his past mind, his echo mind, jumped forward, almost displacing his normal thoughts, but seemed unable to complete its normal vision process.

  He saw a wide office space that was in shambles. Phantoms of people in tattered clothes moved toward him, their eyes wide and reflecting the fluorescent lights above in a pale green. At the same time, he saw the space as it was – desks were neat and ordered, and people stood about talking and working. Several of the desks were actually workbenches, piled with parts and other machines that were being fixed.

  His mind splintered again, and he saw the figures with the pale eyes moving toward him, almost like ghosts, and saw himself shooting them down, one at a time with clear precision. They began to move in the present, and he enacted the will of his future self, slaughtering the wraiths as they fumbled their way over the ruined floor, looking more confused than angry.

  Somehow he held onto sanity as he heard the laughing of that other part of his mind, which held the taint of an eternal demon as well as most of his human memories. He was pressing forward, demanding to take part in the sanguine feast, and there was another voice with him, singing a horrid song into his ear.

  There were three images competing with the laughter – past, present, and future. His prescient mind saw something that gave him pause. He shot and killed, amidst the throng, a young woman who, he realized only too late, looked totally normal. She was a single image standing in all three places; only the future image was frozen, blood flying out from a wound in her neck, surprise plastered on her pale face.

  He took his finger off the trigger, rather than following through with the prescribed motions of the future, and suddenly the future vision changed, then winked out of sight. He was nearly set upon by four people, two of them walking and two of them crawling forward, strange words in an alien tongue spilling from their mouths like linguistic vomit. Andrew glanced up and saw the girl, who stood still and stared at him. Her eyes were almost glassy, but trembled, as if in fear.

  He blinked hard, then quickly dispatched the remaining attackers.

  Brass tinkled on the stone floor, then all was silent, save for a moaning, wracking sound coming from one of the mad people. Andrew ste
pped toward the victim, intending to put it to final rest, when a wordless cry from the girl stopped him in his tracks.

  He looked up at her. She cried out again, as if trying to form words, but the utterance came out slurred and strange.

  Andrew held out his left palm and lowered his rifle.

  The woman stepped quickly toward him. Andrew resisted the temptation to gun her down, remembering the vision, and stepped back. He watched as she went to the wheezing wretch on the ground. She pushed it over to reveal a middle-aged man. He looked like some of the others: pale and thin-skinned, but human besides the strange, hollow eyes.

  The young woman shook the man, then stood up, almost defiantly against his armed bulk. She was crying, and Andrew watched as she grabbed a piece of her simple grey shirt and blotted her tears. Despite the grit caked on her face and in her hair, she looked young. Andrew thought she wouldn’t pass for 20 Earth years. She stomped her foot as she looked at him, and her pouty expression was almost childish, though below it was something harder than any youth should possess. Andrew wondered how old she really was.

  “Can you understand me?” Andrew said, still not raising his rifle, though his trigger finger was of two minds, dancing on and off while his thumb toggled the safety randomly.

  She nodded. Her frown deepened as she pointed to the dead man at her feet.

  “Can you talk?”

  She nodded, but at the same time, wordless vocalizations came out of her mouth.

  “I can’t understand you.”

  The girl clenched her fists and grunted.

  “You knew him?” Andrew said.

  She nodded.

  “Sorry. There was nothing for it. He would have killed me.” Andrew frowned. “You must be early in the change, but why?” he said, mostly to himself. “Everyone else is far gone. Too far gone to save. Are you… yourself?”

  He saw that she was staring at him, but was unsure if she was comprehending. His trigger finger danced some more. He realized that his echo mind – hearing some voice of the past, was still trying to push a vision forward. He allowed it more room, and he saw the workspace as it was, with the strange girl seated at a nearby desk, writing in a notebook. Somebody was seated across from her, talking to her, but the vision was silent. The girl’s lips didn’t move.

  Andrew snapped out of it as the girl stepped past him. He flinched, but he realized she wasn’t attacking. She was searching for something in the rubble. She knelt down and retrieved a simple notebook. A pen was perched on the back cover, and she took it, then opened the notebook and began writing with her right hand. She turned it toward him.

  I’m normal, it said in jagged letters.

  “I’m not so sure of that,” Andrew said. “There’s a Wrtla at work here. You’ve clearly been affected, but maybe if I got you out of here right away-”

  She frowned at him and waved her hands, then said with great effort, “No.” She pointed at the notebook again.

  Andrew shook his head. She grabbed at his arm, and he reflexively shrank away, fumbling with his rifle before lowering it again. Once again, she pointed at the notebook.

  Andrew took a breath and paused. He looked carefully at the girl. He noticed a subtle disturbance in her face, as if half of it was not under control, though not quite drooping like someone who had suffered a stroke. He tilted his head and saw a slight scar running through her scalp to her neck behind her right ear.

  “You’ve had a head injury…” he whispered, craning his head to see. She caught sight of him examining her, and leaned her head, cupping a hand over her right ear.

  “I said you’ve been injured. Recently?”

  She shook her head. Sudden realization dawned on her face, and she reached into her pocket with her right hand. She fumbled out a wallet from her trousers, almost dropping it as she opened it up. She handed Andrew a plain white card.

  Andrew had to hold the card up in the dim lights, but was able to read:

  My name is Mariela Flores. I have suffered a traumatic brain injury. I have difficulty with certain physical tasks, including speech. I may have difficulty understanding you or communicating my thoughts accurately. Janice Telany is my therapist and can be paged over the network. She can program my AAC device with new conversations.

  Andrew looked back at the girl. “Nice to meet you. I’m Andrew. Or… Andrew is the right-now me.” He shrugged. “What happened to your communications device?”

  Mariela waved her hands as if trying to sign something, shrugged, then bent her notebook in the middle.

  “We need to get you out of here.”

  She shook her head, then scribbled on her notebook. My parents are still here.

  Andrew nodded in understanding. That’s why her neuroanatomy remained unrepaired. She must have been younger when it happened, and there were no transports to take her back to a settled planet with proper facilities. Or perhaps the damage was beyond repair. He touched his own head.

  “No fixing me,” he said aloud. “But you do need to leave. I might have already killed your parents.”

  Mariela frowned deeply at him, then rushed past him, back toward the hallway and the mine.

  “Wait!” Andrew shouted. “There could be-”

  Before he could finish his sentence, his future mind pressed forward, demanding his attention. A swarm of insane people was emerging from the tunnels in the mine, rushing toward where he stood in the vision. He saw Mariela, who he was chasing. They paid her no mind, pushing past her on both sides. Then he saw an empty liquid gas tank tip over at the passing of some clumsy madwoman, and fall onto Mariela, stunning her.

  Andrew was frozen in his decision as the vision of himself being smothered by bodies began to fade. The former workers seemed to ignore the girl – for what reason he could not guess, though he suspected some familiarity that persisted despite the stupefied state – but at the same time, she was in real danger. He broke his paralysis and ran after Mariela.

  Fear began to tighten his throat, and he broke into a sweat in his temperature-regulated suit. Normally, his future visions gave him something tangible to avoid, or could guide him in some way, but this one gave him only his demise. He supposed as he ran down the hallway, following the echo of footsteps, that he could turn back and avoid the situation entirely, but he felt a stronger duty to persist. Mariela could be saved, he was sure.

  He began down the stairwell, trying his best to avoid slipping on the remnants of old food wrappers. He heard the sound of more footsteps, and knew the horde, likely awakened by his scuffle earlier, was inbound. The lights in the stairwell flickered and went out. He was in near-total darkness; the only light was from behind him, but below him, his own shadow blocked all. He flipped on the flashlight on his bottom lug rail.

  He fell backward with the shock, hitting the stone stairs heavily. Below him was a swarm of people groping forward, climbing over one of their number that was struggling on the bottom stair.

  “Hold him! Hold him!” came one of their voices from the noisy din, and Andrew knew this lot, though clearly mad, was cognizant enough to be something more dangerous than a herd of animals. Their mouths were twisted and wide, their skin pale and taught, but a dark light was in their eyes, which refracted and defied the blinding whiteness of the gun’s light even as their pupils drank it up.

  Andrew’s nerves unwound; he hadn’t been surprised – truly surprised – in a very long time. Without thought, he squeezed the trigger of his rifle, firing a single shot into the stone wall that went ricocheting down the stairwell. His earplugs deadened the sound immediately, but the cognizant insane humans before him lacked such tactical protection. They screamed and wailed in unison. It was a sickening sound to Andrew, but it gave him time to hastily flip the safety over to auto and fire wildly into the throng of attackers.

  Blood sprayed up onto his suit. Onto his face. The warmth of it sickened him, shattering his resolve even as it brought howling laughter from within. The screaming intensified. The bolt locked op
en. With trembling fingers, Andrew dropped the magazine and slammed in another. He tried to master himself, watching the remaining bodies in the bright circle of light in front of him. He fired another burst – perhaps ten rounds – into the motion before him, then forced himself to toggle back to semi. The light trembled before him, and he willed it to stay still. The bodies below him were still or sliding backward. There were fewer than there ought to have been, meaning that some had fled, surely awaiting him down below, if he dared to try to retrieve the girl.

  He took a breath and slowly worked his way downward, avoiding the bleeding bodies. One still twitched – its face contorted and ticking around vacuous, dead eyes. The image seemed to burn into Andrew’s retinas, a memory at which his old self seemed to smile inwardly.

  Near the bottom of the stairwell, his future mind kicked in again, revealing the waiting attack from both his right and left, the madmen hiding behind piles of discarded equipment. In the vision he saw the remaining group standing back, fearful near one of the tunnels.

  As the vision faded, Andrew’s present mind quickly formulated a strategy. He reached to his back and retrieved his plasma gun. He balanced its considerable girth in his left hand and quickly double-checked the battery life. The indicator on its white-metal case glowed a bright green. It was a clever death tool, compact and efficient, but he didn’t trust it in an atmosphere unless he had no choice.

  He stepped out into the open cavern and pointed his guns out to his left and right. Looking ahead to find the rest of his enemies, he fired a burst from each gun blindly. The roar of the plasma gun almost overwhelmed the loud rifle, its energy ripping apart the nitrogen and oxygen in the atmosphere at a molecular level, but the report from each weapon indicated impact with flesh. He saw the remaining miners, then glanced left and right to see a dead man on each side. The one on his left was burned nearly black and smoking. The stink sent a wave of nausea over him, but his old self suddenly pushed a finger of insanity up into Andrew’s psyche, which quelled the need to vomit and hardened him temporarily.